I am a current PhD student doing research into online conversations about science, and I've been studying the Science subforum as one of my case-studies. As part of my study I'd like to compare the Science subforum to other subforums on xkcd. This would basically involve putting lots of text from other subforums through some automatic software which creates topic clusters (by working out which words frequently occur close together), and also reading some conversations to see if the themes I've found for the Science subforums apply to other forums too.

The key point is that I would not refer to any specific incidents or conversations on any subforums outside Science. I'm also only using publically available information and avoiding safespaces. Nonetheless I wanted to check if any of you would be uncomfortable with this and you'd like me to exclude your posts or comments - if so please do let me know. In case of interest more information about my study can be found at ucl.ac.uk/sts/students/marsh, in particular the 'what I am doing' and 'get involved' sections, and an earlier discussion about my project can be found here viewtopic.php?f=18&t=111904 .

Also, I was wondering if any of you would be willing to talk about your experiences of using this forum? I am interested in hearing about all sorts of use, from lurking to regular posting. This could be carried out through any medium you would prefer. Equally if any of you have experience using any other form of publicly available science-focussed online discussion group - barring blogs, they're not included in my research for various reasons - I'd be very interested to hear about that.

I am happy to chat further or answer questions, so please do comment below, or email me at oliver.marsh.13[at]ucl.ac.uk, or PM me.

I'm not the only one with the impression that things have kind of stagnated here compared to several years ago, am I? Possibly due to the disappearance of the Forum link from the main xkcd page? This is surely a factor of considerable import.

Jorpho wrote:I'm not the only one with the impression that things have kind of stagnated here compared to several years ago, am I? Possibly due to the disappearance of the Forum link from the main xkcd page? This is surely a factor of considerable import.

I feel like there are fewer general posters, and obviously some people have left, but there are still a lot of names I've recognized for years.

... with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.

Jorpho wrote:I'm not the only one with the impression that things have kind of stagnated here compared to several years ago, am I? Possibly due to the disappearance of the Forum link from the main xkcd page? This is surely a factor of considerable import.

Somewhat unsurprisingly I'd be interested to hear more about that - do you mean in terms of numbers of users, frequency of posting, input of new people, something else? (I only started looking at this forum last year, so have no opinion on this myself).

Just a note to say many thanks to the people who I've been talking to already, starting on my final stretch of data analysis now and they're proving really useful. But if anyone would still be keen to talk to me about their experiences on the forum, I'd be very keen to hear them - more interviewees and more interviews always welcome!

Hi all: very delayed update, I submitted and had viva in October, passed with minor corrections (British system, viva =/= completion...). I should have the corrections finished by mid-January, and then I'll make the thesis available to those who'd be interested in reading it. In the meantime huge thanks to everyone who offered help with it, and hope everyone is well!